I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to gaming machines such as traditional slot machines, video slot machines, video poker machines, and video keno machines. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for providing a secure gaming system using hardware cryptography devices.
II. Background
Typically, utilizing a master gaming controller, a gaming machine controls various combinations of devices that allow a player to play a game on the gaming machine and also encourage game play on the gaming machine. For example, a game played on a gaming machine usually requires a player to input money or indicia of credit into the gaming machine, indicate a wager amount, and initiate a game play. These steps require the gaming machine to control input devices, such as bill validators and coin acceptors, to accept money and/or credits into the gaming machine and recognize user inputs from devices, including key pads and button pads, to determine the wager amount and initiate game play. After game play has been initiated, the gaming machine determines a game outcome, presents the game outcome to the player and may dispense an award of some type depending on the outcome of the game.
The operations described above may be carried out on the gaming machine when the gaming machine is operating as a “stand alone” unit or linked in a network of some type to a group of gaming machines. As technology in the gaming industry progresses, more and more gaming services are being provided to gaming machines via communication networks that link groups of gaming machines to a remote computer that provides one or more gaming services. As an example, gaming services that may be provided by a remote computer to a gaming machine via a communication network of some type include player tracking, accounting, cashless award ticketing, lottery, progressive games and bonus games.
To prevent the unauthorized access to and tampering with gaming machines and communications over gaming machine networks, which can cost casinos and gaming machine providers significant time and expense, casinos and gaming machine providers have sought to secure their gaming systems. However, traditional methods of securing gaming machines and their communication networks have included costly software development and maintenance. For instance, software authentication, software encryption/decryption, and software replacement or redevelopment (especially in read-only systems) have been used to verify that the contents of gaming machines have not been altered and to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. Each of these methods involves software development to implement them, and periodic updates to prevent unauthorized users from discovering and circumventing the security measures in place at any given time. Such software development and ongoing maintenance is costly and distracts from efforts to focus software development on improving gaming machines in other ways.
In addition, equipping legacy machines to operate securely in a network with newer machines can be costly. For instance, in order to be compatible with software-based encryption/decryption schemes, legacy machines must be updated to include encryption/decryption software. Such updates can require costly software re-development and testing, as well as the time-consuming reinstallation of software on each of the legacy machines.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a secure gaming system that can prevent unauthorized access to and tampering with gaming machine contents and communications in a manner that does not require costly software development and maintenance. Furthermore, it would be desirable to provide a secure gaming system that can prevent unauthorized access to and tampering with gaming machine contents and communications in a manner that would allow legacy machines to operate in a network with newer gaming machines without requiring costly software updates to the legacy machines.